Coverage of ‘major scandals’ would have been different if Republican in office

An adaptation of John Grisham’s 1989 legal thriller, it stars Matthew McConaughey as a small-town lawyer in Mississippi who defends a black man who killed the two white racists who had raped his 10-year-old daughter.

In his closing arguments McConaughey asks the jury to close their eyes and listen to the painful details of a story about the brutal rape of an innocent little girl.

Then he ends his gripping story with a powerful request to the jury -- “Now imagine she’s white.”

I was reminded of that powerful scene in “A Time to Kill” as I watched the raggedy parade of scandals coming out of Obama’s Washington last week.

The tragedy in Benghazi and subsequent spinning and covering up. The IRS harassment and abuse of conservative political groups prior to the 2012 election. The Justice Department’s seizure of Associated Press reporters’ phone records.

Now, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, close your eyes and think about the details of these crimes against the people by the Obama administration -- and then imagine the president is George W. Bush or Ronald Reagan. `

Do you think the Benghazi, IRS and AP stories might have been covered any differently if the president’s name didn’t start with “O” and his party didn’t start with “D”?

Of course they would have.

Do you think the America people would know a little more about Benghazi today if last fall editors at The Washington Post, The New York Times or “60 Minutes” had issued orders to dig into what really happened there and why Ambassador Stevens was targeted for assassination?

I don’t know all the facts and answers about Benghazi or the IRS. But lots of folks in the Obama government do, and digging them up is supposed to be the job of an honest news media — some members of which are being shamed into finally doing their jobs.

It’s pretty amazing. Thanks to the IRS’ dirty tricks, even liberals are turning on St. Barack.

He now is being compared to Nixon, the only president every American is allowed to hate. Liberal pundits are dusting off the old “W” word — Watergate — and recycling forgotten terms like “enemies list.”

Of course the golfer in chief says he’s shocked — shocked, he tells us — to learn IRS bureaucrats were doing dirty work on his behalf.

Of course the president knew nothing about the IRS’ crimes until last week. It was not his fault. It was those damn underlings again. He can’t help it if they love him so much they break the law.

And when the Justice Department went fishing at the AP last year for information about reporters’ phone calls, it was new news to the Prez. “I must have been golfing with Tiger that weekend,” I think I heard him say, “but I’ll get to the bottom of it and fire a few secretaries.”

Seriously.

Shouldn’t the media be asking if Obama has an enemies list? Or are enemies lists things that are only kept by Republicans and conservatives?

These major scandals rising out of the Obama administration — each pre-dating the 2012 election — are only now starting to attract the mainstream media attention they deserve.

The New York-DC media ignored Benghazi or pooh-poohed its importance until Obama was safely re-elected.

Now it’s beginning to sound like we should have known about those partisan crimes at the IRS last year, too —and we would have if Big Liberal Media had been acting like watchdogs instead of Obama lapdogs.

It’s great to see the shine finally coming off President Obama’s phony halo. But it’s not the result of the “Second Term Curse,” as some of his apologists would like us to believe.

And it’s not because the mainstream media have finally stepped up and done their jobs as fair and honest journalists. It’s simply the result of the president’s character and the character of his sleazy regime.

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Michael Reagan is the son of President Ronald Reagan, a political consultant, and author of “The New Reagan Revolution” (St. Martin’s Press). He is the founder of the email service reagan.com and president of The Reagan Legacy Foundation.